Thursday, 16 March 2017

Dark Matter, Dark Energy And Intrinsic Unity

In Poul Anderson's World WithoutStars (New York, 1966), Chapter V, p. 28, an intrinsic unity of space explains the cohesion of the universe because gravity, propagating merely at light speed, is too weak. Artificial alteration of the n-dimensional coordinates of the mass present at a location changes the location of the mass because these coordinates describe an alterable configuration of the matter-energy field. (Anderson excels at alternative rationales of FTL.)

In Alan Moore's Watchmen, a scientist is accidentally locked in a chamber where the theoretical "intrinsic field" is to be experimentally removed from an inert mass. His body is destroyed but his consciousness forms a new body from the intrinsic field and he becomes the omnipotent American superhero, Doctor Manhattan, who wins the Vietnam War and is the cornerstone of US defense strategy during the Cold War.

1 comment:

I was esp. interested in your comments about Chapter V of WORLD WITHOUT STARS. Will the universe continue to expand forever? Or will there come a time when a dead universe in the vastly remote future will start contracting into a monobloc exploding in another Big Bang?